I brought to IWC's attention in Schaffhausen the issue with the dial of the watch with two numerals in the wrong position. Here's a photo of this rare mistake:

I received today a reply for the forum from Dr. Bregel. I thought you'd appreciate what he wrote:

(Here's) a statement to the forum issue with the exchanged appliques on the 5001 dial.

It’s no discussion that such a fault should not occur.

The inspection of a dial has several steps:

1.At the supplier

a.Appliques are placed on the dial with small feet set into drilled holes

b.Final inspection of the suppliers quality control

c.Controle a la source by IWC inspection personnel at the supplier

2.At IWC

a.Dials are placed on the movement by final assembly

b.Watches are finally inspected by IWC QM Team

So we have at least 5 inspection steps during the production after setting of the dials.

The idea of one of the forum members that we are concentrating on the small issues and oversee the big ones is absolutely valid.

What does IWC do to avoid such cases?

1.We have instructed our personnel and placed the photo with the wrong appliques on the board of instructions in the inspection department.

2.I have personally presented the photo in the monthly department manager routine with 35 participants of all technical departments of IWC.

3.We have started since a long time a discussion with our suppliers to make a Poka Yoke solution which doesn’t allow to exchange the appliques by defining different hole distances for the small feet of the appliques. This last idea is not so easy to realize because it is expensive.

A defect like this can not be avoided to 100% as long as human inspectors are involved. It is a fact that visual inspections have an error rate of about 2%. When you have 3 inspections in a sequence you will have 0.02^3 = 0.000008. So about one of about 10000 might have this defect.

We are very thankful for the feedback of our forum member and would like to give to him a small gift. Could you please send to me the coordinates of him to me.

It is nice to see the response from IWC to this puzzling mistake. Clearly IWC takes Quality and QC seriously, which should reassure those who recently have posted on quality concerns / issues that we cannot diagnose, nor really respond to here on the Forum.

I can just imagine the faces of IWC managers when the photo was shown.

I think the most significant part of the response was:

"We have started since a long time a discussion with our suppliers to make a Poka Yoke solution which doesn’t allow to exchange the appliques by defining different hole distances for the small feet of the appliques. This last idea is not so easy to realize because it is expensive."

Poka Yoke or making the operation "goof proof" is a robust answer and the sign of a serious manufacturer who understands quality control. Bravo, Dr. Bregel!

I think that we are really fortunate on this forum to be fed with information of this caliber, it adds more value to the 'IWC experience'. I still disagree with some more experienced forumers (and obviously true collectors) about the issue of raising issues regarding their high value timepieces, how else will a new owner or future collector get an informative opinion on what to expect after experiencing a minor glitch of the mechanical watch world?